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Keepin' it classy

By Deborah Yaffe, Oct 26 2015 01:00PM

Don’t worry, honey, I’m not planning to get one. But I was still exceedingly diverted by this feature on “Classy Jane Austen Tattoo Ideas” – carefully curated, presumably, to avoid contamination by the far larger pool of cheesy, down-market Jane Austen tattoo ideas.

(I must, however, point out – as I so often do – that #9 is from Austen’s juvenilia – specifically Love and Freindship -- even though it’s used in the 1999 film adaptation of Mansfield Park. Sigh. This is such an uphill battle.)

Despite their obvious classiness, none of these tattooed Janeites seems to me to approach the devotion of Alethea White-Previs, the Virginian whose photos of her own Janeite skin art can be seen here, on the Among the Janeites Facebook page. Whereas the folks pictured in the classy-tattoos feature apparently have one Austen tattoo apiece, Alethea has seven (or possibly more, by now: I haven’t heard from her in a while).

Now, if I were going to get a classy Austen tattoo, which would it be? I kind of like “half agony” on one wrist and “half hope” on the other. . .